<nettime> Carter and doublethink - war is peace

[ernie yacub <yacinfo@mars.ark.com>]

"The massacre [East Timor] continued, peaking in 1978 with the help of new 
arms provided by the administration of former US President Jimmy Carter. The 
toll is estimated at about 200,000, the worst slaughter relative to 
population since the Holocaust."


"When war is peace, and vice versa.."
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 20:32:59 -0700
From: Cathy Woods <cathywoods@shaw.ca>

[...]

Interview with Zbginiew Brzezinksi, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, 
in a French newspaper in 1998. 
http://www.proxsa.org/resources/9-11/Brzezinski-980115-interview.htm

Under Brzezniski and Carter, the US supported the covert funding of the 
mujahadeen, the Taliban's precedessor, and also, to a lesser degree, Osama 
bin Laden. Everyone now knows that -- but what is amazing about this 
interview is that:

1)Brzezinski now admits that the US started funding the mujahadeen a full six 
months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan (the previous justification for 
funding the mujahadeen was that it was to stop the Soviets AFTER they had 
invaded Afghanistan);

2) the explicit purpose of funding the mujahadeen was to draw the Soviets 
into Afghanistan so that they would get bogged down in a long, unwinnable war 
-- "their Vietnam"

3) Brzezinski believes that funding the mujahadeen -- even at the price of 
unleashing Islamic fundamentalism ("some stirred-up Moslems") as a force 
throughout the Middle East and Central Asia -- was well worth the price of 
defeating the Soviet Union. Of course, he said all this a full three years 
before the World Trade Center attack.

Now, as we give $100 million to the Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban, 
we might want to think about who our new found friends are in the war against 
terrorism because they most assuredly will be our future enemies. All this 
makes George Orwell's vision in 1984 look like a pleasant fantasy.


How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen Interview of Zbigniew 
Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From 
the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the 
Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this 
period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You 
therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the 
Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded 
Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is 
completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter 
signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet 
regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which 
I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet 
military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps 
you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, 
but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they 
intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in 
Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. 
You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had 
the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to 
regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to 
President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its 
Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war 
unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the 
demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], 
having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban 
or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the 
liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic 
fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard 
to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a 
rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading 
religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common 
among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, 
Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what 
unites the Christian countries.

* There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole 
exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States 
is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not 
included in the shorter version.

The above has been translated from the French by Bill Blum author of the 
indispensable, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World 
War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" Portions of 
the books can be read and ordered at: Bill Blum's site.

[...]

"It was President Jimmy Carter who, in the late 1970s, popularised "human 
rights". While Carter expressed grave concern about the abuse of human rights 
by America's enemies, he worked assiduously to protect the right of America's 
clients to abuse them. While damning the Soviet Union and Iran, he gave 
Indonesia all the lethal means it needed to wipe out a third of the 
population of East Timor. So delighted were the Indonesians with this 
Orwellian interpretation that they adopted it themselves, claiming that by 
invading East Timor, they were bringing "human rights" to the East Timorese.

In his novel 1984, Orwell called this "reality control" and "doublethink". 
War became peace, and vice versa. The present-day application of this excites 
almost no discussion in this country." - John Pilger: "When war is peace, and 
vice versa" 
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1993/126/126p15.htm
 _____

Noam Chomsky: Unworthy victims of terror 
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1999/442/in1.htm

Excerpt: In 1975, Suharto invaded East Timor, then being taken over by its 
own population after the collapse of the Portuguese empire. The US and 
Australia knew that the invasion was coming, and effectively authorised it. 
The former Australian ambassador to the US, Richard Woolcott, recommended the 
"pragmatic" course of "Kissingerian realism", for one reason, because it 
might be possible to make a better deal on Timor's oil reserves with 
Indonesia than with an independent East Timor.

The Indonesian army relied on the US for 90 per cent of its arms, which were 
restricted to use in "self-defence". The rules were followed in accord with 
"Kissingerian realism". Pursuing the same doctrine, Washington at once 
stepped up the flow of arms while declaring an arms suspension, while the 
information system kept the whole story under wraps.

The UN Security Council ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no avail. Its 
failure was explained by UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In his 
memoirs, he took pride in having rendered the UN "utterly ineffective in 
whatever measures it undertook" because "the United States wished things to 
turn out as they did" and "worked to bring this about". As for how "things 
turned out", Moynihan comments that within a few months 60,000 Timorese had 
been killed, "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet 
Union during the Second World War."

The massacre continued, peaking in 1978 with the help of new arms provided by 
the administration of former US President Jimmy Carter. The toll is estimated 
at about 200,000, the worst slaughter relative to population since the 
Holocaust. By 1978 the US was joined by Britain, France, and others eager to 
gain what they could from the slaughter. Protest in the West was minuscule. 
Little was even reported. US press coverage, which had been high in the 
context of concerns over the fall of the Portuguese empire, declined to flat 
zero in 1978.

____

East Timor Questions & Answers

By Stephen R. Shalom, Noam Chomsky, & Michael Albert 
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/oct1999albertqa.htm

What was the United States role regarding Indonesia's December 1975 invasion?

On the eve of the invasion, U.S. President Gerald Ford and his Secretary of 
State, Henry Kissinger, were in Jakarta meeting with Suharto. Kissinger later 
claimed that East Timor wasn't even discussed, but this claim has been 
exposed as a lie.

In fact, Washington gave Suharto a green light to invade. Ninety percent of 
the weaponry used by the Indonesian forces in their invasion was from the 
United States (despite a U.S. law that bans the use of its military aid for 
offensive purposes) and the flow of arms, including counterinsurgency 
equipment, was secretly increased (a point that should be borne in mind in 
interpreting what is going on today).

The United States also lent diplomatic support to the invaders. In the United 
Nations, U.S. ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan successfully worked, as he 
boasted in his memoirs, to make sure that the international organization was 
ineffective in challenging Jakarta's aggression. Under the presidency of 
Jimmy Carter, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights, there was a 
further increase in U.S. military aid to Indonesia. Since 1975, the United 
States has sold Jakarta over $1 billion worth of military equipment.

What are the likely motives of the United States now, after the referendum?

U.S. motives now are the same as always: to pursue those policies that will 
enhance the power and economic returns of U.S. corporate and political elites 
with as few dangers of disrupting existing relations of power as possible, 
and especially as few disturbing effects in the form of enlarging public 
awareness and dissidence.

The United States has a long history of cozying up to ruthless dictators, 
being indifferent to if not enthusiastic about their atrocities, and 
disengaging only when Washington concludes that the dictator has provoked so 
much instability and dissidence that U.S. interests are threatened. Thus, 
President Jimmy Carter backed the Shah of Iran until it seemed as if the army 
would fall apart in trying to suppress mass demonstrations; President Reagan 
embraced Marcos in the Philippines until splits in the armed forces and huge 
numbers of people in the streets put U.S. interests at risk. So in Indonesia, 
the United States supported Suharto until a popular explosion seemed to 
imperil U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.

The United States supported Indonesian policy in East Timor-with weapons, 
training, and diplomatic support-as long as doing so seemed to further U.S. 
interests. As long as East Timor could be kept off the front page, Washington 
was happy to give Jakarta a free hand. But news of the latest atrocities 
could not be suppressed. Some courageous journalists and independent 
observers, some UN workers who refused to abandon the Timorese, and networks 
of activists have all spread the word. This has raised the costs to the U.S. 
government of continuing to tolerate Indonesian terrorism in East Timor. 
Washington still hopes, however, to protect its economic stake in Indonesia 
and maintain close ties with that country's military. 

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